Former actor, and playwright and author Reggie Oliver has been named more than once as the rightful successor to M. R. James and Robert Aickman in the English tradition of the weird tale. “The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler,” his second collection from the superlative British independent house Tartarus Press (already featured in TeleRead), is another chance to find out why. Originally published in 2006, it was re-released earlier this year as an e-book, with original illustrations by the author, who is a talented draftsman as well.

There are sixteen stories in this very generous, and generously priced, collection, plus an introduction by Glen Cavaliero, so it is an excellent opportunity to get to grips with the full range of Reggie Oliver’s work. That is a wider range than appears in his first collection “The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini,” where his theatrical roots were slightly more obvious.

With so many stories, obviously not all of them are going to be of the same quality, although Oliver keeps, his worst vice as a writer, a tendency to display a snide and self-consciously knowing wit (also very much a fault of M. R. James, incidentally), under very much better control here than elsewhere. But they are refreshingly diverse, with Oliver wringing great variety and imaginative freshness out of his favorite milieux and inspirations.

The tales are less disturbing than the work of Aickman, with fewer enigmas and open endings, as Cavaliero says, and in that sense, often more conventional. But they are also sometimes much more scary or horrifying than Aickman’s work, even allowing for their predominant situation and tone. (As Oliver implies in his Eton ghost story “Bloody Bill,” his fiction is best consumed by “those who are not disposed to be alarmed by its elitist implications.”)

I’ve only once been actually scared by a tale of Aickman, but Oliver managed it at least twice in this volume: The demonic possession in “Among the Tombs,” and the different but just as unsettling presence in ”The Babe of the Abyss,” are not things you would want around you. For one thing, Oliver is not afraid to upset or disgust, and if his writing may lack social insight into the everyday horrors of being British (portrayed wall to wall in Brit slasher fiction anyway), it has deep, dark psychological and even metaphysical insight into the hidden catacombs of the mind.

As almost invariably with Tartarus Press, this is a very high-quality e-book, with some lovely visual flourishes. l’m only upset that the limitations of EPUB make it hard to zoom in on Oliver’s fascinating illustrations. And I’m not going to reveal how the book gets its terrific title: Find out for yourselves.

For any lover of ghost stories, this is a great read, at an almost ludicrously low price considering its quality.

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Buy “The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler & Other Strange Stories”

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  1. Only a couple of weeks ago Mr. Oliver’s first novel “Virtue in Danger” has been co-published by zagava Books (zagava.de). It is a fabulous, partly autobiographical read in Reggie’s inimitable style. Thoroughly recommended indeed.

  2. Yes, Todd, I am well aware of The Dracula Papers, but as that was only part one of a projected four (and I am eagerly awaiting the pleasure of reading the next instalments), I think that the “first novel” bit was justified, also as it was completed before part one of the Dracula Papers but held up in publication – by the way: I recommend googling for images of “Virtue in Danger” as I think it’s the most beautifully presented of Reggie’s books so far.

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